Chris Evans and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Sacrifice Arrives on Netflix Today

Chris Evans and Anya Taylor-Joy’s strange new thriller Sacrifice arrives on Netflix today, bringing together movie stars, billionaires, a doomsday cult and the threat of being thrown into a volcano.

The Sacrifice Netflix film is directed by Romain Gavras and stars Evans as struggling action star Mike Tyler, who attends a spectacular environmental charity gala hoping to revive his career.

Things deteriorate quickly when the event is invaded by Joan, played by Taylor-Joy, and a group convinced that an extinction-level catastrophe can only be prevented through human sacrifice.

Netflix’s official guide to Sacrifice describes the film as a collision between mythology, celebrity culture, environmental anxiety and the performance of wealth.

Chris Evans plays a movie star in crisis

Evans’ character Mike arrives at the gala already questioning where his life and career are going.

He finds himself surrounded by celebrities and extremely wealthy people publicly talking about saving the planet while enjoying an extravagant event hosted by billionaire Ben Bracken and his wife Gloria.

Vincent Cassel plays Ben, while Salma Hayek Pinault appears as Gloria.

Joan and her followers interrupt the carefully managed evening with a much more extreme environmental philosophy.

They believe disaster will strike within three days unless three people are sacrificed to a nearby volcano.

Mike suddenly finds himself moving from professional embarrassment to a genuine fight for survival.

Anya Taylor-Joy leads the cult

Taylor-Joy plays Joan as something more complicated than a straightforward villain.

The character genuinely believes in the cause she is fighting for, creating a contrast with the wealthy guests whose environmental concern often feels performative.

In Netflix’s interview about the film, Taylor-Joy says she saw the story partly as a clash between individual action and collective responsibility.

Evans has similarly described the film as contrasting people who care very little while presenting themselves as virtuous with extremists who care so deeply that they are prepared to die for what they believe.

That gives the chaos a satirical edge rather than turning Sacrifice into a conventional hostage thriller.

Charli xcx appears as Mother Nature

The supporting cast is almost as unusual as the premise.

Charli xcx appears in a small role as Mother Nature, while Swedish musician Yung Lean plays Arthur.

Ambika Mod plays Daughter Nature and Sam Richardson appears as Oliver.

John Malkovich, Jade Croot and Miriam Silverman complete the wider ensemble.

Director Gavras has said that casting musicians alongside established actors fitted the deliberately heightened world he wanted to create.

He had known Yung Lean since the artist was a teenager and specifically wrote a role with him in mind, while Charli’s cameo developed through the same circle of long-standing creative friendships.

Sacrifice was filmed on real mountains and volcanoes

The film’s unusual landscapes are not simply studio backgrounds.

Production took place across Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland, including locations requiring cast and crew to travel into difficult terrain.

For the charity gala sequence, hundreds of extras in formal clothing were transported to a working mine in northern Greece.

Other scenes required actors and equipment to travel up mountainous terrain, including locations around active volcanic landscapes.

Gavras has said he wanted that physical reality because it affected the performances in ways a controlled studio environment could not reproduce.

Greek mythology meets modern celebrity culture

Gavras co-wrote the film with Will Arbery, whose television credits include Succession.

The story draws on Greek mythology, Joan of Arc and even, according to the director, some of the basic structure of The Lord of the Rings.

At the centre is the idea of people travelling towards a volcano because they believe something must be destroyed there to save the world.

The difference is that Sacrifice surrounds that mythic structure with social media, celebrity branding, environmental hypocrisy and contemporary wealth.

The result is deliberately difficult to categorise.

Netflix describes it as a satirical thriller, but the film also moves through dark comedy, action and fantasy-inspired mythology.

Sacrifice is streaming today

Sacrifice arrives on Netflix today, 16 October 2026.

It runs for approximately one hour and 40 minutes.

For Charli xcx fans, her appearance may be relatively small, but the wider cast alone makes the film unusually attention-grabbing.

Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Salma Hayek, John Malkovich, Ambika Mod, Yung Lean and Charli xcx are not an obvious ensemble.

Then again, a film about a celebrity charity gala being invaded by people demanding volcanic human sacrifice was probably never going to have an obvious cast.